The Booker Shortlisted Modern Classic from the author of Last Orders, Mothering Sunday and Here We Are One summer morning in 1943, lock-keeper Henry Crick finds the drowned body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Nearly forty years later, his son Tom, a history teacher, is driven by a bizarre marital crisis and the provocation of one of his students to forsake the formal teaching of history—and tell stories . . . Waterland is a classic of modern fiction: a vision of England seen through its mysterious, amphibious Fen country; a sinuous meditation on the workings of time; a tale of two families, startling in its twists and turns and universal in its reach. Compulsively readable, it is a novel of resonant depth and encyclopaedic richness, mixing human and natural history and exploring the tragic forces that take us both forwards and back. It is also a book about beer, eels, the French Revolution, the end of the world, windmills, will-o’-the-wisps, murder, love, education, curiosity and—supremely—the malign and merciful element of water. ‘A quite brilliant novel’ Daily Telegraph ‘Inspired’ New York Times
ISBN: | 9781471187322 |
Publication date: | 11th July 2019 |
Author: | Graham Swift |
Publisher: | Scribner UK an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ltd |
Format: | Paperback |
Pagination: | 512 pages |
Genres: |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction |